At work, I use a big Acer monitor connected to my Macbook Air via an HDMI dongle from Moshi and an HDMI cable. For quite some time, I was content with having the sound come out of the Macbook Air, which I have set up just to the left of the big monitor as a second screen.

But the other day, since I have the huge TV in my office, the rest of the staff came in to preview a promotional video we’d done for our agency. The tinny sound of my Macbook Air speakers wasn’t enough. I wanted to hear it out of the TV.

This is what I did.

In the upper right hand corner of the Mac screen, there’s the sound icon. Click it normally and you can increase or decrease the volume. But, if you Option-click it, you’ll get all the different output options your Mac has to send audio through.

Choose the option that represents your HDTV (mine is called AT3265, for some weird reason). When you do that, the little audio speaker icon will grey out and you’ll need to control your Mac’s audio with your TV set’s remote control or other volume buttons.

The video preview we did was a success, and now I can’t imagine listening to audio through anything but the big TV on my desk. Progress has been made!

This is also available via SystemPrefs>Sound>Output. But yes, the option-click is MUCH faster/simpler.

About the author

Rob LeFebvre is an Anchorage, Alaska-based writer and editor who has contributed to various tech, gaming and iOS sites, including 148Apps, Creative Screenwriting, Shelf-Awareness, VentureBeat, and Paste Magazine. Feel free to find Rob on Twitter @roblef, and send him a cookie once in a while; he'll really appreciate it.

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